Republican joins new bid to repeal death penalty

Sunday

Jan 6, 2013 at 2:00 AM

HAMPTON — State Rep. Renny Cushing is back in the Legislature, after being ousted along with many other Democrats in 2010, and the co-sponsor of his signature legislation on death penalty repeal, Stephen Vaillancourt, R-Manchester, expects to have a better chance than ever of passing the bill.

Nick B. Reid

HAMPTON — State Rep. Renny Cushing is back in the Legislature, after being ousted along with many other Democrats in 2010, and the co-sponsor of his signature legislation on death penalty repeal, Stephen Vaillancourt, R-Manchester, expects to have a better chance than ever of passing the bill.

The difference this time is that newly inaugurated Gov. Maggie Hassan has stated she opposes the death penalty. A previous bill authored by Cushing in 2009 that passed the House died in the Senate after Gov. John Lynch threatened to veto it. And before Lynch there was Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, who vetoed a death penalty repeal that passed both chambers in 2000. Vaillancourt said Shaheen was "about the only Democrat in the state who opposed the repeal, but the only one who matters."

"There's no way we'll get enough votes to override a veto," Vaillancourt said, adding that if Gov. Hassan takes the lead there may be a different outcome.

Vaillancourt said he thinks Democrats are two or three times as likely as Republicans to favor death penalty repeal, so the 2012 surge of Democrats means "there's more of a chance than in the past."

"I think we'll pass it in the House this year," said Vaillancourt, noting, "I don't have a count on the Senate."

State Sen. Nancy Stiles, R-Hampton, who Vaillancourt suggested might consider supporting the bill, said she's heard Cushing's "passionate testimony," but it hasn't changed her mind. She said she is unsure whether her fellow Republican senators would support the bill.

Cushing could not be reached by deadline for this story. His testimony in 2009 before the full House of Representatives, however, will likely come up again as review of the new bill begins.

Cushing persuaded the majority of the House in the spring of 2009 after relating a personal story of his father's murder in 1988 by a neighbor who was a town police officer.

"There was a knock on the front door ... my dad got up to open it and two shotgun blasts rang out, turned his chest into hamburger and he died in front of my mother in the home they lived in for 35 years and raised seven children," he testified.

And while his family wanted justice, Cushing testified that killing the man who killed his dad wasn't the answer.

"The death penalty would not have brought my father back, it would only further victimize another family," he said. "If we make those who kill make us into killers, then evil triumphs. And we all lose."

Cushing's opposition to the death penalty, as the son of a victim of murder, flies in the face of what many might believe his stance would be. In addressing the issue, he has said he was brought up with a religious background and strong morality, and always opposed the death penalty. That opposition did not waver after his father's murder, he said.

"If I changed my opinion it would have given my father's murderer more power," Cushing testified. "Not only would my father be taken from me but so would my values."

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